


331. perfect cracks

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [240]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 19:45:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9919325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: It's a grey day.





	

When Sarah gets back to the house there is nobody there except Helena. The house echoes. It’s a sunny day outside, bright and too hot to live through, but inside the shades are half-drawn and everything is dulled. Helena is lying on the couch, rocking back and forth a little bit, staring at nothing.

“Hey,” Sarah says. Helena doesn’t say anything. Her hand is curled up near her mouth; besides the rocking she isn’t really moving.

One of those days, then. Sometimes Helena gets like this. Sometimes Helena has bad dreams, and she won’t tell anyone a single thing about them.

Sarah drops her things by the door, shucks her shoes, sits down and leans against the arm of the couch. “Hey,” she says again, but more softly. Helena’s eyes drift in Sarah’s general direction and then drift away again. They are flooded with the same light that’s dripping into this house – the sort of greyish light that gets scraped off the edge of dawn, muddy like dishwater. Helena’s eyes full up to the brim with dishwater light.

Sarah doesn’t say anything else; instead she turns around so her chin is almost resting on the cushions. Helena’s eyes find Sarah’s. Helena sighs, and the rocking stops, and her eyes close. Sarah can see the veins in her eyelids. When is the last time Helena got a full night of sleep? Do any of them know?

Sarah reaches out a hand and gently brushes the edge of Helena’s hair, just where it falls over her face. Helena’s eyes don’t open even a little bit, but her head tilts towards Sarah’s hand; Sarah takes that as permission, slowly begins stroking Helena’s hair with just the tips of her fingers. “Heavy, isn’t it,” she says quietly. “Sorry I can’t take it for you.”

Helena’s eyes open at that and consider Sarah. She sucks her lips between her teeth at a taffy-slow pace, so that Sarah has to watch the bitten-up skin vanish one tiny piece at a time. Helena opens her mouth with slow and ponderous thought. “I don’t want that,” she says, her voice a cicada shell or some other kind of ghost. She swallows, adds: “Sorry.” Her eyes close again.

“Nothin’ to be sorry for,” Sarah says, and then stops. Her voice is reaching for some affectionate nickname, some soft thing to hold in her mouth, but she doesn’t have one. There is nothing to say that wouldn’t shatter, here. _I love you_ , but that’s not right. _Sestra_ , but that seems cruel.

“No,” Helena says. She doesn’t elaborate. Sarah keeps running her fingertips through those few strands of Helena’s hair; if she stops it would feel like giving up, letting the both of them know that this moment is over and Sarah couldn’t make it right. So. She keeps going. What else could she do?

Helena’s eyes open again, and Helena uncurls her hand from over her mouth and reaches out to press light knuckles to Sarah’s cheek. “I want to be good,” she says. Against Sarah’s skin her fingers are trembling.

“You’re good,” Sarah says. “I think you’re good.”

“If I was good,” Helena says, “I would not be. Like. This.” She moves her hand back from Sarah’s face, like she’s just now realizing it’s been burning her. Instinct moves Sarah’s other hand to brush against it, so they’re just pressing fingertip to fingertip.

“You’re good,” Sarah says again. “I’ll keep sayin’ it, alright? If that’s what you’re worried about.”

Helena shakes. She presses her whole hand against Sarah’s hand and she shakes and she doesn’t answer.

“I know you’re good,” Sarah says. “I know you, Helena. That what you’re scared of? That none of us know?”

Helena presses her chin into the couch cushions in the world’s worst nod.

Sarah twines her fingers with Helena’s; slowly, after a moment of hesitation, Helena curls her fingers in. Her fingerprints press against the spaces between Sarah’s knuckles.

“I know you,” Sarah says. “I saw you. Before. And I’m gonna say you’re good anyways.”

Sarah’s end of the resulting silence is so expectant that it takes her too long to realize Helena is crying. She isn’t even moving while she does it. Her eyes are unblinking, and her breathing is steady, and she’s crying.

“Oh, Helena,” Sarah says. “You’re alright. It’s alright.”

“You are so kind,” Helena whispers. “You are so good, _sestra_. I want to be good. Like you.”

_Not like me,_ Sarah thinks, _please don’t be good like me, be good for real, you’re already so much brighter than me, you want to be good so much and I_ —but she can’t make this moment into her mess, so she swallows it down. She leaves it be. She threads her fingers through Helena’s hair, cradles her sister’s skull in her palm.

“You’re gonna be great,” she says. “Like the sun.”

Helena looks at her and then her eyes slip close. A single streak of water traces down the bridge of her nose and then it’s gone, but: her fingers are still clinging to Sarah’s, and the corner of her mouth has a smile tucked in it. That means something, doesn’t it? It has to mean something; Sarah lets it, lets it matter, and keeps stroking Helena’s hair and waiting for Helena to tell her it’s okay to stop.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed.


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